The person before me,
oswann, talked about the challenges of keeping up with technology, the deep seated fear of being left behind that seems to plague the people this century. As a person who's been last in line, the last one to finish every race, the last one to own anything new for most of her life, I'm here to tell you--it's not that bad. Once you get used to breathing the exhaust fumes of everyone's smaller, faster, smarter everything, and the critical looks of people who just don't understand why you prefer to putter along at the speed of a 486 computer or 1965 Dodge pickup truck---it's really pretty comfortable. I get where I'm going too, just not at the same time as everyone else. Which means I get the clearance sale prices, see rabbles of Monarch Butterflies enroute to Mexico and hear the ends of my children's sentences. You might say I enjoy the journey as much as the destination.
I suppose this casual approach to getting where I'm going is as much to blame as my husband is for the loss of my morning's work. I'm editing a short story to send out via e-mail. In the final lookover yesterday, I grew unhappy with the first few sentences and decided to rework them. This turned into reworking sections through out the piece. Finally, about ten thirty this morning I deemed it ready to go and asked my husband to glance it over for typos. Sure, he said, let me get a cup of coffee. For some reason, this required running the microwave.
Like many things we own, our home is older. Everything in my office--the window unit air conditioner, my computer, printer and and the microwave in the kitchen are all on the same circuit. This means if we don't turn off the air conditioning while we're running the microwave the circuit shuts off. He knows this. But his excuse when I asked him what he was thinking was "Well, it doesn't happen every time."
No, only just the times my word processing program for some reason fails to back up the document changes. Or when I have a carefully composed cover letter sitting in an e-mail window, waiting for me to attach the document and push send. I suppose if I'd paused to save my changes before going to call him, and had added the e-mail to my Drafts folder, then I wouldn't be in this position. But I wasn't worried about it. It wasn't going anywhere . . .
So the rest of the afternoon will be fairly quiet for me as I attempt to recall what in the world I wrote this morning and why it seemed so brilliant at the time. Maybe it will be even better this time. Maybe I'll see something I didn't see before. Maybe this rewrite will be the one that gets this oft rejected little story published. Or maybe it's time to buy a battery back up for my computer. An old one.